Cybertrolls' attacks on Web add to mourners' pain

Cybertrolls pile on mourners' painThey deface online memorials, including one for Cypress-area teen who killed himself

PEGGY O'HARE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Published 6:30 am, Monday, November 8, 2010

The word itself conjures up images of grisly, mythical creatures living under bridges. But in the cyberworld, trolls are very real people who disrupt Web forums — and among the most sinister are those who deface memorial pages dedicated to youngsters who died under violent circumstances.

These trolls bombard tribute pages on the Web with hateful messages to a dead youth's grieving family and friends, post pornographic pictures and upload graphic crime-scene photos of bloody corpses. It is a growing and troubling occurrence that happens on memorial pages all over the world.

Experts say the trolls' motives may include seeking attention from their peers, sadistic aggression that gives them feelings of empowerment and lashing out at what they perceive as "media hype" and public displays of grief. The behavior so far has not been targeted by legislation in the U.S. because of strong free speech protections.

The malicious behavior recently hit home in Houston when anonymous trolls using pseudonyms destroyed a memorial page on Facebook dedicated to Asher Brown, the 13-year-old Cypress-area student who killed himself Sept. 20 by shooting himself in the head. His parents blamed his death on bullying they allege he endured at Hamilton Middle School.

Facebook page

Once Asher's case drew national media attention, trolls descended on the late teen's memorial page on Facebook with a vengeance, posting hateful comments across pictures of the boy's face - such as "Bullied in life, bullied in hell" and "Hey, Mom... sorry about the mess! LOL."

The trolls also posted pornographic pictures, made fun of Asher's sexual orientation and even posted a graphic photo of a man who shot himself in the head in a car, writing, "Did he look anything like this afterwards?"

"No matter whatever you people do, you cannot hide from us trolls," one anonymous poster warned.

The schoolmate who started Brown's "Rest In Peace" page on Facebook became so overwhelmed by the trolls' attacks that he shut down the forum.

"Who keeps putting (up) those pictures? Those are so bad. Please stop," the boy wrote one day. He deleted the offensive images. Then, several days later, he deleted the entire page.

The trolls "put more daggers in an already wounded heart for us," said Asher's stepfather, David Truong. "It's almost like them putting graffiti on a physical memorial and kicking it over. That's what it feels like."

Began in March

Similar offensive pictures and comments appeared on Facebook tribute pages dedicated to Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University student who jumped to his death from a bridge after being secretly videotaped in his dorm room having a gay sexual encounter. Trolls also have attacked memorial Facebook pages dedicated to teens who were murdered or killed in accidents.

Memorial page defacements escalated and became an organized phenomenon beginning in March, when animal trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by a whale at Sea World in Orlando, Fla., said Whitney Phillips, a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Oregon studying trolling behavior. Cybertrolls flooded the amusement park's page with offensive postings about her death, then began to form online relationships with each other, Phillips said.

During her studies, Phillips created a fake Facebook account, befriended around 150 trolls on her page and watched dozens of coordinated trolling "raids" on various memorial pages.

Phillips said many trolls have up to six Facebook profile pages at a time. Though she does not have specific statistics, she has found most trolls are men between 18 and 34 and said that most are college-educated. She said trolls are rebelling against "media hype" surrounding the youths' deaths and reacting to strangers who post messages of condolences on memorial pages for people they never met.

The trolls also take "great issue" with memorializing someone in a public forum, believing that grief should be relegated to a private space, she said.

"They think of it as a kind of game," Phillips said. "A lot of what trolls do, it's for the benefit of other trolls. They think this is just one-upmanship in a lot of ways. Who can post the most outrageous things?"

Inflicting pain

While Facebook can ban user profiles that draw complaints, trolls usually just open a new Facebook profile under another fake name and continue, she said. "The First Amendment ultimately is what keeps them in business," she said.

John Vincent, a professor and director of the University of Houston's clinical psychology doctoral program, suspects the trolls' have darker motives than rebelling against media hype and public displays of grief on the Web.

"I think there's certainly a sadistic element - the idea that, 'I can inflict pain, I can do something where I can act out my aggression,' in this case through a cybermedium," Vincent said of the trolls' attacks.

"The kind of people who do that often are angry, they're not happy. I would suspect many of them are loners. I would suspect they spend a lot of time glued in front of a computer screen," he said.

The trolls likely enjoy the attention they receive, especially from peers in the cyberworld, experts say.

Experts say people can best protect Facebook memorial pages by making them private and only allowing known friends to join the group, which will keep strangers from posting pictures and comments.

Facebook officials say their site is self-regulated, allowing page administrators to delete offensive postings, and that there are links on nearly every page to allow reporting of offensive content. The company refused to say how many users' profiles it banned last year, but said it has a large team of investigators who take action on reported abusive behavior.

Protected speech

Experts say the behavior probably cannot be prosecuted under federal or state law and that such attacks, though profoundly hurtful for grieving survivors, are most likely protected by the First Amendment as free speech.

The new cyberbullying law in Texas allows prosecution for online harassment only if the offender impersonates a real person without permission by setting up a Web page or sending an e-mail or text message with the intent of harming someone else.

Trolls use fake names and tracking their whereabouts can be a challenge. While Australian authorities have prosecuted trolls for defacing memorial pages and the United Kingdom is starting to crack down on such activity, it's a different story in the U.S.

"Other countries are going to have a much easier time dealing with this issue than we are because our free speech protections are so incredibly strong here," said Houston civil attorney Kinan Romman, a former software developer. "We have, by far, the most ironclad free speech protections of any Western nation."

Romman and Houston appellate attorney David Furlow said they don't believe the offensive images and posts on Asher's now-deleted memorial page are prosecutable under Texas law.

While the incident might make a stronger civil case should Asher's family decide to sue, Furlow said, "It would be a costly and difficult fight with real freedom of speech issues in it."